Brienne's Mirror
by SumaniDavings
Summary: Ten thousand players are trapped in Sword Art Online. All wear their own face. All except one careful coward. OC's
1. The Face in the Mirror

_I do not own Sword Art Online or any of the recognizable characters. No profit is being made from this._

 _Warnings: Original characters, kissing girls and only mentions of Kirito and Asuna. If you can't handle any of this I advise you to step back and spare yourself._

* * *

 **The Face in the Mirror**

My name is Brienne and I was a beta tester for Sword Art Online. Of course that's not my real name, but let's be honest: Nobody uses their real name in an MMO. As far as beta testers go I wasn't a very good one, because at the end of the beta test I was level eight. RPG's really aren't my thing. But when I first heard of the Full Dive technology I did everything I could to make sure I was in the beta. And while the game itself might not be what I normally enjoy it was awesome.

I consider myself ugly in Real Life and Full Dive was the opportunity for me to see what it's like to feel beautiful. I tried not to be too vain, and between all the other players I didn't even register. When I was seventeen, and the full version was finally released, I even considered faking an illness so that I could play maybe two or three days in a row without a break.

I held myself back, because I feared the inevitable reaction of my family. Of course, I got my wish thrown back in my face a few hours after the game started. Instead of locking out reality I was locked out from reality. A subtle difference, but important. To be honest I was happy to have an excuse. But I hated the thought of making my family worry.

Everything started normal. I spent the time before Kayaba's announcement by walking around and talking with people. Then we were all teleported to the town square. Here is where I made one decision that I had second thoughts about throughout the whole ordeal. Kayaba, the guy who had just revealed that he had effectively taken us all hostage, told us to take a look at that mirror item in our inventory.

I hesitated. Was this even safe? Then, when people started to glow and turn into their real appearances, I understood. And after thinking about it for maybe all of three seconds I fled. Luckily I was close to the border of the square, so nobody noticed in the commotion. I don't think they would have accepted that I got away. I felt vaguely guilty, but my relief over dodging that particular bullet outweighed it. Spending my time as a prisoner in an environment as hostile as Aincrad in my real form? Pure torture.

I went into an alley and sat down. The rest of what Kayaba said finally sunk in. We were trapped in a world that was all about fighting – and now also the minor detail of _not dying._ I never doubted he was telling us the truth. Hopefully my family got the warning and listened to it. That would have been a stupid way to go. But there was nothing I could do.

Going out there, fighting those beasts? No way. People always imagine beta testers as those powerful front-liners, people who know the inns and outs of the game. Kirito kind of set the tone for what the average gamer expected when they thought of beta testers.

I _had_ prior knowledge, yes. But as you recall I was never good at this game. I enjoyed the visuals and I enjoyed being someone else. I didn't enjoy being unable to step three meters outside the city limits without getting jumped by something out for my blood. Digital they may be, but damn if the creators didn't have an eye for detail.

Go face one of those godawful boars, stupid level 1 monsters that they are, with the sure knowledge that failure means death, and I dare you to laugh at us who where afraid. No, I couldn't do it and I wouldn't do it.

People started to die. Not because of the game. That came later, mostly. But because of themselves. They lost hope or didn't take Kayaba at face value. The result was the same: Suicide. That, too, is a really stupid way to go. When you die there is no way things will ever be better.

After three days on minimal rations I started to realize that moral was going to be a real problem. There are NPC-run taverns that provide food, of course. I had been to several myself. But their selection was neither very large nor very satisfying.

Enough to exist and on higher floors even to enjoy yourself occasionally, but real, handmade food was going to be something that was sorely missed. Who takes one of their skill slots and fills it with a utility skill like cooking when your life depends on it?

Most famously Asuna the Flash did it, and maybe three other people I know personally. Let's say one in hundred. Those that stayed behind in Starting City where never part of the game anyway, and the rest were mostly people with RPG experience. When they heard their decisions could literally make the difference between live and death they had better things to do than _cook._

For some reason SAO never had food based bonuses. No, in reality it had, they were just not expressed by code. I'm not going so far as to say a good meal can make the difference between live and death, but it can sure as hell raise your spirits when you are down in the dumps.

And when I thought about that I realized that this would be my part of the battle to bring us home. Or better: To bring them home. I gave us maybe four or five years until the first people would start to disappear because of some real life reasons. I was willing to contend myself with this time. But most of us wanted out.

The catch about learning the cooking skill was that, as a utility skill, it was only unlocked once you got to level five. Stupid arbitrary RPG rules. But no way was I going outside alone.

I looked around – and caught my reflection in a window. I still had my avatar. It was subdued, as far as avatars went, but now people would assume that this was how I really looked. And that meant I was beautiful and boys would be after me. Full-Dive was new enough that I expected 90 percent of the players to be socially awkward teenagers. Just great.

I didn't want to party with someone who was busy ogling me and thus getting us both killed. I also had no desire to be the target of bragging heroes. Sighing I wandered through town. Other players went by, looking downtrodden. Then I discovered a slim girl standing in front of a weapon shop. That was my ticket out. I gathered my courage and spoke to her.

"Ehm... excuse me?" I begann, hesitant and breathed. She turned to look at me and smiled after a second. It had been three days since Kayaba's announcement and by now most players who would recover had recovered. Seeing how she was quite pretty she had no doubt already had the dubious pleasure of being subjected to male attention.

It got better later on, but those first two or three weeks a lot of people were pretty desperate. I guess sometimes it's a good thing this was a game with arbitrary rules, so there wasn't really anything you could do to a girl besides annoy the hell out of her. Well, the same held true for boys, but somehow that never became a problem. Ever.

The girl was taller than my avatar, which was made pretty small on purpose, and the long, violet ponytail hinted that she had been in a female avatar before all this. Hair was among the few things that didn't change when switching – except if you switched gender. Apparently having female fantasy clothing on a male is hilarious, but their hair is not, and thus Kayaba had decided to switch it to some standards. Or – it struck me. He used our facebook accounts, or something similar, to adjust the appearances. Because while he may have taken our faces from the NerveGear itself, there was just no way he could know our height and hairstyle from it.

"Yes?" The girl looked at me, waiting.

"Um... I... you... that is, are you leaving," I finally got my act together.

She looked a bit embarrassed.

"Well... yeah. I heard there are villages out there and I kind of want to see them. The User Guide says that you can exchange your standard sword for something similar here, but I'm not sure what to choose."

I looked her up and down while nodding. I had already exchanged my sword for a dagger, because it was the least threatening weapon available in SAO.

"So swords aren't for you?"

"Not exactly...," she trailed off.

"Then why don't you try a spear and let me come with you? That way you'll have the advantage of greater reach, especially with how tall you are."

She looked pensive, then nodded and turned back to the NPC. A few moments later she was equipped with a spear instead of a sword.

"Shall we?"

"My name is Brienne," I told her while sending the party invitation.

"Call me Nono," she said while blushing again. Kayaba really was a stickler for details. I looked at her name in the party menu. Nononononono. I raised an eyebrow.

"My first choice was taken and I was impatient. It was only meant to be a test character anyway," she finally explained, while we headed for the next gate. I let it go.

"Have you been outside before?" I asked. Nono nodded.

"Yeah... before the announcement. To think I could have died and not even realized why... What about you?"

"Yeah... I've been out there, now and again. Hunting one or two boars, so I could pay for a decent meal and a safe room. I'm only level two right now."

"I'm level 3. Quite a pair of heroes, aren't we?"

"Who knows... it's only been three days. I doubt there are many people who are above level 6 right now.", I pondered.

"Are you sure? It's been three days and there was nothing anyone could do but play the game. By now the first ones are likely to have hit level 20."

I caught myself from saying that the first floor was hardly a place to go beyond level 10. There was no way I could explain away that knowledge, and I surely didn't want myself to be outed as a Beta.

The atmosphere hadn't become quite as beta-hostile as it got later on, but people where looking at Beta Testers with a mixture of blame and the expectation that we would wave our hands and everything would be alright. How they ever arrived at that conclusion is beyond me.

"I heard some guys complaining yesterday about how slow the leveling was going," I explained to Nono. In fact that was one of the main complaints the Beta-testers had. Now I understood why it was set up that way.

While braving the road to the next village we developed a strategy that worked pretty well on low-level fiends: She pulled them into attacking while I hid in the cover of her spear. When she had blocked the attack I plunged forward and finished the beast. It took two or three times in the beginning, but then we had both leveled up and things became easier. Until we hit the invisible barrier to the next region and there was a noticeable leap in difficulty.

Twice I had to actually stand up to the monsters, because we were facing more than one, and once I got below 50% hitpoints. It was terrifying. The pain felt real, the almost paralyzing fear most certainly was. We were both shaken, but I think Nono coped a lot better. She hugged me and encouraged me to go on. That was a very novel sensation. Having a female – or any for that matter – friend comfort you.

Finally we arrived at the small village and I still wasn't level 5. Nono was almost there, and I was at maybe half way.

The adventure of reaching the next town brought me riches beyond measure, if you compared it to what the average Starting City citizen had. I was tempted to buy heavy armor, but I knew from experience that it would slow me down too much. Heavy armor had killed me a few times before I learned to avoid it altogether.

The clothing system of SAO is a bit strange for outsiders. The focus of the game lies heavily on melee weapons, but protective gear still exists and changes your stats. But how you look is often determined by a totally different section of equipment. Things like the iconic black mantle of Kirito or the uniforms of various larger guilds. They rarely have any effect, but they express how you feel a warrior should look – or at least that's my guess why there was no way to show the standard armor.

This also made it fiendishly difficult to guess the level of a player at a glance, since you couldn't look at their equipment. Even when the normal equipment was shown it all looked so similar that there was no real way to guess how strong a player was.

I almost spoke out when Nono selected heavy armor, but stopped myself because a lot of people obviously survived using heavy gear. It was just me, being too skittish and preferring to strike from a blind spot. Nono was definitely a born tank. She never once flinched when those beasts rushed at her, and she never panicked like me, instead calmly drinking a potion whenever it was necessary.

When we were done with our shopping and broke again, we set out to find the local tavern and get some rest. Reaching the village had taken most of the day and none of us felt like going out at night. That and we were exhausted.

"Let's go through here. It looks like a shortcut," I whispered, going into a narrow alley without waiting for Nono's approval. She followed without hesitation.

"Excuse me," a weak voice spoke to us from a corner, "please, listen to me."

Inwardly I rejoiced. The quest was still here or had reset already after someone else cleared it.

"How may we help you?" Nono questioned the huddled figure.

"Please... I need your help. I was tasked to bring taxes into the capital, but I was ambushed by monsters and lost the money. Now the villagers won't let me into my house and I'm forced to sleep out here and go outside the village to find something to eat. I beg of you: Help me get the money back!"

A small sign appeared in the air in front of us and I accepted the quest. Doing it would definitely push us over the level five threshold and the reward was very tasty after experiencing the bland tavern food for days.

"Aww, dammit," a male voice sounded from behind us, "I heard there was a quest here but you two beat me to it."

"Do you want to join us?" Nono invited the guy. Well, he made it out here, which meant he couldn't be totally useless – and we could use the added power. He looked like your standard sword-and-shield, which would give the monsters another target instead of me.

"That would be lovely. I hear the guy gives you some paste that's supposed to be really good."

It was not _paste_ , I thought annoyed, it was cream.

"I'm Nono," my companion introduced herself while I invited the guy into our party. "Brienne," I whispered, trying to limit my association with him to a minimum.

"I'm Toriko. Pleasure to meet you, ladies."

We set out. Fighting with Toriko at our side was indeed simpler, once we managed to integrate him into our fighting routine. With three people we managed to kill the mini-boss at the end of the quest without problems. My original plan had been to lure it away while one of us grabbed the money bag.

Back in the village we celebrated our victory in the tavern.

"I think we make a good team," Toriko said, and he wasn't wrong. We did work well together, and Nono thought the same. I had to tell them then and there, before they got their hopes up.

"Sorry guys, but I only wanted to become level five. I... I can't fight those things day after day."

"But we will protect you," Nono encouraged me. I shook my head.

"How often did we almost die out there because we blundered into something we didn't expect? What will you do when I freeze in fear because I finally snap in the middle of a fight? I'm a liability, and I refuse to put you at risk because of that. This game likes to up the difficulty in leaps instead of a slope. Believe me, you don't need someone like me. You need another two or three people like Toriko and yourself." It was the longest I had talked since meeting Nono, but this was important.

"So, that's it?" Nono sounded hurt. Like she had imagined to fight with me at her side until the day we conquered the castle at the top of Aincrad. I shook my head.

"Of course not. If you want to you can accept me as your friend," I said while sending her a request that was almost immediately answered.

"I'll always be here for you. Just... not out there."

"So, Nono-san, what do you say? Do you agree to make this a more permanent group?" Toriko formally asked my new friend.

"I do. But we should really look for some more people," Nono nodded.

We stayed together for a while longer and then turned in for the night. After Nono had left I held Toriko back to talk to him alone.

"What is it, Brienne-san?"

I stared him in the eyes, and even though he was more than a head taller he took a step back.

"If you manage to get her killed I will murder you in your sleep. Is that clear?"

"Crystal," he gulped, surprised by my vehemence, " but if you are so worried about her, why don't you come with us?"

"Because those monsters don't sleep," I whispered, and I hated myself for my cowardice. But this had been the plan from the get-go. Know yourself and all that.

That night I didn't go to sleep, because I took out all ingredients I had collected throughout the adventure and got to work. I couldn't do very much without a fully equipped kitchen, but most taverns had some rudimentary kitchen-corner that was usable by players. When morning came my cooking skill had gotten to level four and I had managed to make something that I counted as food.

I greeted both Nono and Toriko after they came down from their rented rooms and presented them with the fruits of my labor. At least the ones I had deemed good enough to share with my friend and colleague. The rest I had sold to sleepless, traveling players for a low price already.

"If you find ingredients, bring them to me. I'll trade you a good meal."

"You bet I will."

"Take care of yourself. Please don't die?"

"Worrywart." Nono ruffled my hair, which made me blush for a change.

The village in the wilds was the current quest-hub for most fighters, which made it ideal for people like me. I bought their ingredients for a better price than the NPC-run shops would have given them and in turn sold them real food for good prices. Well, it was not really real, but real enough for us. I tried not to think too much about the fact that we were probably all hooked up to live-support in some hospital.

While stupid arbitrary RPG-rules dictated one had to be level five to gain access to a support skill, those same rules thankfully didn't say anything about capping the skill at the player level. That would have been really annoying. As it was I only had the problem to gain access to a well equipped kitchen and the ingredients.

As a standard player I would have invested the money I got from all the monsters out there into a house and have the necessary equipment installed there, but even with playing the standard way that was still days away at least.

My method of trading and selling would probably take longer. But until I got to higher level cooking skills the public cooking corners should suffice.

Nono sent me messages every few hours, that I answered dutifully. Sometimes I gave her advice that I had "heard about" from other players. Technically that was even true. While I played the beta-version I had loved to socialize with the other players. That way I had accumulated a lot of knowledge about what was going on, and most of that was still true. My good memory was one of the few things I liked about me, and it served me well.

There were information brokers, of course, but somehow I couldn't bring myself so sell information that might save a life. It felt... uncomfortable.

Nono and Toriko had managed to acquire an ax-fighter who was basically taking my role as a damage dealer and another guy who was wielding sword and shield. From what Nono told me he was only doing that because he couldn't find a katana.

Things kept going like this. A week later they had acquired another party member and escorted me to the next village. As payment they only took a solid meal at the end.

When we were finished, Nono raised her voice: "Now that we are all satisfied, there's something I'd like to suggest." Everyone looked at her. "I think it's time we made our permanent party official and started a guild." The others nodded in agreement. It was only the logical next step for a well working group of fighters that had no Real Life interfering.

I wished I'd found the courage to fight with them, so I could be closer to Nono, but whenever I had to fight against something that wasn't at least three levels below me I would break out in sweat. It was really ridiculous, but I couldn't get used to it.

Even though I kept going out in secret. I couldn't shake the thought of Nono being stuck somewhere, and me being far too weak to do anything about it. So I kept leveling. Slowly.

Suddenly Nono looked at me directly and asked: "What do you think?"

"About you guys being a guild? That'll be great."

She hit my hand lightly and admonished me: "No, you dolt, about you joining it, of course."

That hit me totally by surprise. "I... you... but I can't fight!"

"And you won't have to. That's what we are for, isn't it?" Toriko grinned.

"Right. You'll be in charge of logistics, fairest of the cooks," Ikobana added. He finally found a katana and had the incurable habit of flirting with me. I was really hoping he was joking.

"Fine," I sighed finally, "on one condition."

"What's that?"

"Nono doesn't get to name it," I whispered with a cheeky grin at my friend. She screamed in played outrage, and as an apology I ordered another round of drinks.

* * *

We still hadn't settled the matter of the guild-name by the time they joined the first boss-raid. I really wished they wouldn't go, but of course they couldn't be stopped. They wouldn't have been the people I had come to like if they could. And it was only the first boss.

But of course, it was also the boss. Maybe it's a miracle that only the leader of the raid died. I never got the full story, but I heard about Kirito, and it took me two days to understand that he had taken the fall for all of us. Ironically I was just the kind of beta-tester that he had described in his little speech. Nono's account of the whole matter was very vivid. I wished she would escape this game and become an actress, but I still didn't have very high hopes, especially not since my friends where going on the front-lines.

They weren't called the front-lines yet, but it was what they were doing. We also finally decided to call us "Four-Leaf Clover", an implied wish that we would all be lucky enough to see the end of SAO.

The guild kept pressing on. We moved our headquarters every few days, when a new village was reached. I kept track of our finances, because we really wanted to buy a real headquarter, that every guild-member could teleport to. Since we also had to keep everyone equipped with top-level gear it was kind of difficult to amass the necessary funds.

I kept cooking and selling food. Business was good – handmade cooking was clearly superior to the NPC-provided food, even though that, too, was steadily getting better. Higher floors even had sweets and cake.

When we reached level ten Nono and I had our first big fight. She had volunteered the Four-Leaf Clover for a scouting raid on the boss. Along with three other parties they were to assault the overpowered monster and find out it's strengths and weaknesses. It was ridiculously dangerous, even when they could teleport out at any time. I called her an irredeemable hothead with no sense of self-preservation and she shot back with money grubbing coward.

Later that evening we both apologized quietly. Maybe she really _would_ die tomorrow, and the last time we talked wasn't supposed to be an argument.

Luckily she survived and I was so relieved I started to cry. She added crybaby to the list of names to call me and I didn't care one bit.

We finally had enough money to buy us a guild-house. It wasn't anything fancy, just a simple abode with a large room for meetings and five additional rooms. I got one for the kitchen, and Nono and I got a room for ourselves, since there were no other girls in our guild.

Ikobana had tried his best, but for some reason they didn't join us. Instead we had gained another three young men. Alkali and Genji, two high-schoolers like myself, and Krigger, a guy in his twenties. Two of the guys got one room, but it was clear from the start that they would have to accept newcomers if there were any.

Now that I finally had my own kitchen I started to experiment for real. Serious cooks were often close-minded and rarely shared their trade secrets. I made it a point to try baking. Secretly, of course. Experiments were always a messy affair.

My hour came after the next boss-fight. I made a special cake in the shape of Aincrad, that actually tasted quite well. Designing the thing had been a nightmare, but it wasn't as if I had monsters to hunt or anything. Lucky for me the system did most of the heavy lifting. All I had to do was specify how the cake was supposed to look and provide the ingredients and necessary tools.

"Let's eat Aincrad," Ikobana joked which was somehow funny at the time.

When we had been trapped in SAO for a year Ikobanas flirting became more serious. Nono turned colder at the same time. Well, he was a reasonably good-looking bloke, so it wasn't exactly a surprise that she was jealous. Her being interested in our comrade was in turn making me jealous, which put a strain on our relationship. I really admired Nono, her naming sense aside, and over the course of the last year it had grown into something more. Something fragile. Something I had to keep hidden because we were both girls and sharing a room.

People adapted to life in Aincrad. Some found the courage to leave Starting City, but they would only ever catch up to the front-lines when they got wiped out. A horrifying prospect.

The fact that I kept my true exterior hidden was beginning to get to me. Every day I lied to my friends, and worse: I lied to Nono. But she, most of all, could never know the truth.

More than once I sat on the roof of our new and bigger guild-house, looked up to the stars of the fourteenth floor and went through my inventory. The mirror couldn't be thrown away or deleted. It could only be used. I looked at it for hours and tried to activate it, but in the end I couldn't. I kept lying.

Everyone in SAO lied to some extent. Nobody ever told their real name, except in rare cases of limitless trust. But they all looked like their real selves and they all acted like their real selves in a world were fighting against deadly monsters was just everyday life.

I only acted how I would if I looked like this in reality.

We had the first losses. Krigger and Uzumaki, a newcomer, died in a boss-raid. The worst thing about SAO is that there is no body. You shatter and vanish without a trace. I tried to make portraits, but failed horribly. We made a plaque for each of them and hung it in our guild-hall. The fallen should not go unremembered. The fighters became more careful, and for a long time nobody died in a boss-fight.

Nono and I found almost back to our past friendship, but like an invisible wall Ikobana was always between us. I wanted more, but didn't dare to make a step forward; she wanted him, but he only had eyes for me now. It was a complete full-circle love triangle and it was eating at me. Especially since Ikobana would never have spared a second glance at me in Real Life. Or he would have, but definitely not for the same reasons.

We went on, and we fought, and even I was already on floor twenty. I kept a bigger level-distance to the monsters now. Just enough to still get some experience. It felt more like a game that way. It still hurt every time I blundered an evasion and took a hit, but loosing a few hp doesn't really have that much of an impact. It's like knocking against a wall. Thanks to my level advantage and equipment I seldom needed more than four hits per monster, and that was the way I liked it.

The sudden death of Ikobana shook us all. He didn't die in a boss-raid or in a monster hunt. He died because he tried to help a bunch of lower level players out. As it turned out they were part of Laughing Coffin and lured unsuspecting helpful high-level players into an environment where they would naturally relax their guard.

This practice didn't work for long, because soon after that the front-line guilds decided to put an end to Laughing Coffin. I would never understand what kind of human being can be so careless about human life, but when Laughing Coffin had their members attack front-liners they bit of more than they could chew.

They probably thought they were save in their hideout, but when the location became known it became their tomb. They died, but the front-liners paid a heavy price. Many died, more than should have, and those that came back alive where changed.

After this we held the funeral for Ikobana, Toriko, Iason and Lakrimosa. The founders of the Four-Leaf Clover were running out of luck, only three left, and one of them was a coward. I stood besides Nono, lips pressed together and fighting against my despair. It was supposed to be a game. An escape. Instead we brought the human element into an environment that was infinitely deadlier than modern Japan.

And we promptly followed the footprints of our ancestors and tried to kill each other. I couldn't wrap my head around the reason. It wasn't as if we had to fight for resources here. But I heard accounts of people getting their spouses killed just to get their stuff. It was madness. The mood in the Four-Leaf Clover was very somber when we retreated to our rooms.

I took Nono's shaking hand. "I'm sorry," I whispered to her, she hugged me and returned the sentiment. We didn't talk much.

The second big fight with Nono came when she and the rest of the gang were about to join the raid against the last boss we would ever fight in Aincrad. It had just wiped out the whole scouting party with no one being able to return. Teleport Crystals were blocked in there and she still wanted to go.

I was angry, I was afraid she wouldn't return to me, and I was afraid of looking in the mirror every day and knowing that she died without me by her side. I begged her not to go, but she became angry in return. She asked me if there was any good reason why she shouldn't go, why I shouldn't want her to go and clear the path to our freedom.

"Because I love you and you're gonna die!" I screamed in tears, my fingernails biting into my hands, before I could really think about it. Anger makes a person stupid, and fear is no better. There was a heavy silence. I couldn't take it back now.

"B... but... Ikobana...," she mumbled, confused and taken aback.

"I know," I whispered tiredly, "I know you liked him, okay? That doesn't change anything. Why would it?"

"B... b... I... you..."

"Please don't freak out. Nothing changes. It's just... now you know. That's all. I never stared at you dressing, okay?"

I turned to leave the room, but she held me back. Her strength stats were way above mine, and since we were the same gender and she was on my friendlist this wasn't even noticed as unwanted affection yet. Her head leaned on my shoulder. We stood there in silence.

"Why didn't you ever say anything?" Nono wanted to know. What answer was there? Because we could all die every day? She even more likely than me? No, the real reason was...

"Because this is all a big lie. I'm a lie. This world is a lie. Nothing good would come from it."

She sighed into my shoulder.

"You are one stupid girl, you know that? Who cares if it's a lie? Are your feelings a lie?"

"No," I whispered quickly.

"Than you, Brienne, are no liar to me. Why didn't you tell Ikobana no?"

"Hu? What are you talking about? I ignored all his advances."

"Yeah... that's why everybody assumed you were playing really hard to get. You need to make things clear."

"Sorry, I wasn't aware there was a common way to do such things. Not much experience."

"I see. I'll keep that in mind." She turned me around and kissed me. An info popup appeared, asking me if I wanted to report her, but I ignored it.

"When I come back, we talk about why you think you are a lie, all right? But now, we need to kick some butt, because otherwise I'll never see my family again. I won't die on you now."

Famous last words, I thought, but I kept it to myself. Still somewhat in shock that she had kissed me I simply nodded.

And that was how I said farewell to my best friend and my first mutual love. Because the next noteworthy thing that happened was the shattering of Aincrad itself. I was sucked out of the game and woke up in a hospital bed, hooked up to life-support, as I had imagined.


	2. And the Walls Come Tumbling Down

_I do not own Sword Art Online or any of the recognizable characters. No profit is being made from this._

* * *

 **And the Walls Come Tumbling Down**

My hands were skeletal, my muscles atrophied, and my hair was comfortably long but extremely sticky. I tried standing up, and almost fell down on the floor. Heavily breathing I sat on the edge of my bed.

"Please wait!" someone called out in the hall, "You can't stand up! Please, we need to check up on you, you're extremely weakened!"

Whoever was out there being chased by a nurse had more energy and drive than me. I finally stood up, made my way over to the sink and looked into the mirror. My secret hope that my SAO-appearance had made it over into reality had been shattered right after waking up, but I wanted to see my face. It was worse than I remembered. Two years of neglect and aging.

After being someone else for so long my true self repulsed me even more than before. It was also very strange how small things looked now.

I'm quite tall, almost two meters. The occasions when I met someone who didn't have to look up to see my eyes can be counted with the fingers of one hand. I was thin before, but now I was looking like a specter, unhealthily pale and with a grim expression.

"Please, lie down in your bed," a female voice told me from behind, "Your family will be informed, but you can't be up yet. Please cooperate."

"Fine," I said, trying to use my full voice for the first time since the beginning of all of this, "please don't worry about me."

I looked at the nurse and smiled a bit, and probably because of the stress she was under she didn't even look scared. Or maybe she had seen more than her share of scary looking people and simply couldn't be rattled by stick-thin and sickly-pale half-giants.

While I lay in bed I opened and closed my hands, to get some feeling for my body back, but it got boring pretty quick.

Nono. As soon as I didn't watch my thoughts her name and face popped up. The tears followed. She was out of reach now, no matter if she lived or died.

The reunion with my family distracted me later. After a short time for rehabilitation the SAO-survivors who were still in school got sent into a special facility, the SAO Survivor School. I saw Nono again and learned her true name, Kitamura Aiko, but of course nobody recognized me. It's hard to draw a connection between petite Brienne and lanky me.

The surviving guild-members sent me messages through the government, but I didn't respond. Nono – Aiko – sent nothing. Not until two months later, when two simple sentences reached me.

 _You know where I am. Please talk to me._

I laughed bitterly, but kept the message. It was machine written, yet I pinned it at my wall as if it was calligraphy.

When I walked the halls of my new school stares and whispers followed me. This was normal, but I hadn't had to endure it for a few years, and my skin had grown thin. One time two wannabe heroes even cornered me and accused me of being part of Laughing Coffin. I gave them my blank stare. It was the most effective defense mechanism I had come up with.

"You think," I began without inflection, "that I belonged to a guild of psychopaths who killed dozens, if not hundreds, of people without remorse, and you want to annoy me? A person that by your own reckoning doesn't hesitate to take a life and uses whatever means necessary? That regards killing as an art form and not as a travesty against life? Is that what you are telling me?"

There was no threat, no anger, no fear. I had perfected the art of sounding like a void. It usually got better results than shouting or threatening, especially in combination with the Stare. They caved and retreated with some posturing, but somehow it became common knowledge that I had been a member of Laughing Coffin. I was used to being an outsider. But Aiko sized me up with an unyielding stare a few times that made my skin crawl.

It was as if she was trying to look into my soul, but I was reasonably sure my soul was well hidden, and I just gave her the blank wall of my unattractive face. No aggression, no backing down.

Some time later I suddenly got another message, this time from Takuroni, the ax-fighter and last surving founder of the Four-Leaf Clover besides me and Aiko.

 _No matter why you are avoiding us, you owe at least Nono an explanation. I don't know what happened between you guys before the last boss-fight, but she was really looking forward to seeing you again. It's been almost half a year now. Get a grip and come to the Dicey Café on the sixth of august. We'll have a reunion of the Four-Leaf Clover and would be really really happy if you would show up. But even if you don't – please talk to Nono. She has been crying._

 _Sincerely yours_

 _Takuroni a.k.a Shinohara Hotaru  
_

I had heard about the bar that was run by Agil, a well-known merchant from SAO, that had become something of an unofficial meeting hub for SAO players.

Get a grip.

The date was three days from now, ample time to stop panicking and come up with a reasonable plan.

She has been crying.

They would all be there. Seven people who knew me and who would understand that I had betrayed them all. Lied to them. Wasn't really one of them.

She has been crying because of you.

There was really nothing good that would come out of it. All I could do was hurt me and them. And then I would have to see some of them every day and live with the accusations in their eyes.

 _You made Nono CRY!_

Nono would hate me for sure. It was a very bad idea.

Three days later I was sitting at the bar of the Dicey Café. The Four-Leaf Clover had reserved a table and I was glancing at them from time to time. There was a certain atmosphere that was surrounding most of the patrons. Yes, this was a meeting place for SAO players.

I downed my soda and got up. I had been here and I had seen them all. Alive, healthy. Looking like they were supposed to.

Happy.

Aiko was among them and smiling sadly at something that Takuroni said to her. When I saw her here, among our friends, I suddenly noticed how different she was at school. Less sure of herself, less confident.

I almost talked to her. Almost.

Instead I paid Agil who looked as if he tried to remember me – unlikely, we had only talked three or four times during SAO – and left. When I was outside I stopped. Turned around to the door, and back again. Angry I hit a lantern and regretted it deeply, because I had used the same hand to hit a mirror that same day, with similar results.

Some people looked at me from the corners of their eyes, but most ignored me like I wasn't even there. I breathed in, breathed out, and started to walk down the street, when suddenly I heard a voice behind me: "Brienne?"

She had called me that a million times. Laughing, crying, screaming. But back than it had been the truth. Brienne died with Aincrad. Now there was only me. I took longer steps and went into the next alley.

"Wait!" her voice called behind me.

 _It's useless to run. She has seen you._

I walked faster.

 _She knows!_

"Wait!" she called again, and now she really _did_ sound as if she was about to cry. I felt her gripping my jacket, but unlike in SAO there was no way for her to stop me by force.

"What do you want?" I asked without turning around to her. My voice was grating over my vocal cords and sounded even deeper than normal. I hated my voice as much as I hated my appearance, which was the reason Brienne almost never spoke and never ever lost her voiceless whisper, not even when fighting with Nono.

"You are Brienne, right?" her voice was small, hopeful, afraid of being disappointed.

I kept quiet, my hands curled into fists. How?

"Why do you keep running away?"

"Brienne was a coward, don't you remember?" I asked, not quite admitting to being Brienne.

"And does that make her unreal? Do you know how many people never got enough courage together to leave Starting City? Do you know that she kept going into the field _solo_?"

And I was always so careful about no one finding out.

"She was stupid. And why do you keep bothering me?" It was difficult to keep my voice from shaking. She was still grabbing my jacket, and I was still looking straight ahead.

"I asked _everyone_ if they had ever seen you. And I couldn't find a single soul that remembered seeing you. You stick out a bit, you know?"

"Haven't you heard? I was a member of Laughing Coffin," I said, barely holding back the bitterness, "Why would I be seen?"

"You forget that I was part of the... raid...," her voice faltered. Good job, me. Make her remember how she killed some murderers. We had never really talked about it, but I wasn't an idiot. I knew that the front-liners killed a lot of Laughing Coffin's members. I also knew that the death toll among the front-liners was so high because they hesitated. And that Nono came back because she didn't.

What I hadn't thought about was if that was making her question her own humanity.

"I would have seen you," she said with calm certainty.

"Leave," I rasped. I couldn't let her see me breaking down.

Finally her steps echoed in the alley and then there was only silence and the raging of my thoughts against myself. I crouched down, put my head in my hands and fought against the hickups that tried to break out. I lost. It took me five minutes to fight the tears back where they belonged.

Then I got up and turned around. I had no idea where the alley would lead and there was no point in getting lost anymore. The damage was done.

I almost ran over Aiko who was leaning against the wall just around the corner.

"Why would you do this to yourself?" she asked me, pulling out a handkerchief. I took it and cleaned my face.

"Do you really have to ask?" I whispered, unintentionally falling back to Brienne's soft voice.

"Maybe not. But I think you should know something." She took my face that was still hanging down with both hands and turned it so I had to look her in the eyes.

"I. Don't. Care."

With that she left and went back inside the Dicey Café. I wiped the last tears from my face and left, too. To go home. I don't care, she said. Didn't care about what? My reasons? My lies?

Me?

I almost didn't go to school the next day. But now that I was back I felt like I owed it to my family to see it through. I had also thought about starting an apprenticeship to become a confectioner. Maybe, just maybe, that would work out. But to do it I needed to finish school.

Aiko didn't look at me much the next day, and I knew I had blown it for real. Of course it was over the moment Aincrad was over, but now there weren't even empty dreams. I was finally back where I began two and a half years ago.

And it sucked.

When school was over Aiko suddenly walked up besides me, put a small package into my bag, and left without another word.

It was a game. Alfheim Online. And a small letter.

 _If you would still call me friend, meet me under the large tree in the capital of the Undine. I'll be online the whole evening._

She had stunned me again. I didn't want to talk with her in reality, so she gave me a VRMMO. I had looked into the development of the full-dive technology since I had come back. And I knew there was supposed to be "no risc at all" for the new system. Yeah, right. But, well... it was now or never. I went into the next store and bought an AmuSphere. No way would I ever put on a device again that could literally cook my brain. Nobody was that stupid.

Back home I needed twenty minutes to gather the courage to utter two simple words. When I was online and it was too late anyway, I spent almost an hour on the creation of a character that might or might not be used ever again. It was like SAO: If I could feel beautiful, why wouldn't I? To my utmost surprise "Brienne" was even still a valid name.

I was teleported to the Undine Capital, and was immediately stunned. It was a breath-taking city under the sea, gravity defying designs and fishes everywhere. How was there supposed to be a tree in a submerged city?

I asked around and got a friendly answer with directions. There was a tree at the central square. It was surrounded by an air-bubble held in place by magic. And at the base, among the many blue-haired fairies, I saw one sitting alone and looking as if she was waiting for someone without much hope that they would really show up.

"I... Nono?" I asked with Brienne's voice.

She just looked at me and I averted my eyes.

Finally, I couldn't bare the silence any longer.

"I'm..."

Suddenly I was enveloped by her hugging me as if there was no tomorrow.

"Stupid," she whispered, her voice cracking, "What took you so long?"

"I... uh... cosmetics," I mumbled, motioning up and down my body, which was fairly difficult since Nono was still hugging me.

"You are so vain," she laughed under tears and finally let go, took me by the hand and pulled me through the crowd.

"I know," I told her quietly, my smile barely noticeable.

She brought us to a small cafe and sat me down.

"Why wouldn't you write? Why... why wouldn't you _tell_ me?"

"Because... well... didn't you see? I hid so long there was no way I could tell you."

"Yeah, so? I knew SAO wasn't what you really looked like," she told me, annoyed.

I almost jumped out of my chair. "What? How?"

Her look became amused. "Do you really think you can sneak out of our room, night after night, and I wouldn't ever follow you? I saw you looking at it. And from there with the way you always kept you voice down... well...", she trailed off.

The mirror. The goddamn mirror that I simply couldn't use and that always called to me. To be honest for the first time in my life.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Sorry for what?"

"I'm sorry for lying to you."

"So you were lying when you told me you loved me?"

"No," I said so quick I forgot to whisper, "of course not!"

"Then you were lying when you showed me you'd rather be a cute little girl that bakes cakes?"

"No," I whispered, looking at my fingers this time.

"Then nothing else you could have lied about matters to me."

"It doesn't?" I asked weakly. She leaned over the table and kissed me.

In a repeat of yesterday she said: "I. Don't. Care." putting emphasis on every word by kissing me. I blinked a few tears away and kissed her back.

"So... will you please talk to me in school now?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"And bake me a cake as an apology?"

"It'll probably not be any good. I haven't got much experience baking for real yet."

"And cooking?"

"Some."

"Than you can make me a lunch, and when you are good enough I expect my apology-cake."

"Fine," I laughed, "you win."

She sat back and sighed heavily, but happy.

"Finally," she said, "you finally laughed again. I hate that empty look you always show."

"I'm sorry," I whispered in her ear, sitting down on her lap and not caring about the rest of the world for a few minutes for once. The catcalls we attracted went straight above our heads.

* * *

 _I always wondered why everyone took out the mirror at once._


End file.
